Roadkill can occasionally serve as a passable educational tool

The eagle has landed in a puddle of abstract thought, smack dab in the liver of Appalachia. New gears are bubbling up in its brain as the terrifying new concepts of things like “yesterday” and “lactose intolerance” are ricocheting like pinballs between them. The eagle has a headache.

The tractor-trailer that will soon put an end to this headache is, as all tractor-trailers are, under the control of a 46-year-old man named Dale. A carefully centered bumper sticker on the back of the trailer declares that God is the co-pilot, but the simple truth is that God hasn’t co-piloted a damn thing since He discovered Minecraft.

Dale sees the eagle. The tractor-trailer belches its heavy melody of warning, but the eagle doesn’t move.

Look away, Brian. Remember what I told you. Sit upright, with your arms relaxed and your fingers tense. Close your face and silently repeat the mantra, “I broke up the Beatles. I broke up the Beatles.” Pinch the diplomat’s daisies as he speeds away in his peppermint BMW.

The eagle is smeared across three square feet of sun-bleached asphalt. Dale has already moved on with his life. The LORD is fighting a skeleton.

Now, an autonomous blue hand/forearm has slid onto the scene. Its fingernails are charcoal and its veins are neon. It wields a spatula of the purest gold. “Buddy,” it says to the All-American Carcass, “I like your style.” And with one deft flip, it sends the eagle on one last flight. To sail effortlessly above the mighty Ozarks, leaving a vapor trail of glorious organs in his wake, is a dream no more! The denizens of neighboring realities quietly seethe in disbelief.

The eagle has landed on Jay-Z’s backyard grill, where it sizzles for precisely twenty seconds before being noticed. “O Fate! Why dost thou tempt me so?” the business, man shouts into the cylinder of Heaven. His vow of veganism crumbles like a colisseum of Parmesan as he swallows the expired fowl in one crooked gulp. The flattened neurons that had approximated enlightenment mere moments before are now rolling along Jay-Z’s papery tongue, forming a lattice of flavors that, in some corridors, might just be filed under U for umami.

Bèyønçë grimaces down in rage from her cedar cross. “You fool!” she bellows in an unearthly, gutteral growl, accompanied by the slick guitar stylings of house band leader Ricky Minor, “Now Surgat the Gatekeeper will never accept the offering of our firstborn!”

“Whatever,” retorts Jay-Z as his soul turns to gristle. “Eagle meat is the tits!”